David Wallace will be speaking about “Reputation Management” at SearchFest 2010, which will take place on March 9th at the Governor Hotel in Portland, Oregon. Tickets are available now. To purchase, please click the following link.
1) Please give me your background and tell us what you do for a living.
I am the CEO and founder of SearchRank (www.searchrank.com), a search and social media marketing firm based in Phoenix, Arizona. I’ve been helping companies both large and small market themselves online since 1997. Today we continue to focus on providing clients with very strategic marketing campaigns as well as run and operate a small portfolio of company-owned web properties, each designed to reach out to a specific niche and ultimately bring in revenue.
2) Please give me some proactive steps that a person can do to help insulate them from an Online Reputation Management problem.
The best step one can take either for their brand name(s) or their own name is to go on the offensive before there is a problem. In other words, don’t wait for the inevitable to happen first. I’ve consulted with quit a few business and individuals as of late that did not take offensive actions and are now dead smack in the middle of an online reputation nightmare. It is much easier to combat bad online reputation long before incidents ever start.
One of the easiest proactive steps to take, besides having a great company web site along with a section featuring key leadership, staff and the like, is to make sure branding has been secured across all the major social media sites. Setting up company and/or individual profiles at Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Friendfeed and many others will help one to “dominate” the organic search results. With a rich portfolio of social media profiles along with ensuring those same profiles are linked to from the main web site, blogs and other web properties, it can be very easy to control at least the first three pages of organic search results and as such, keep any negative results at bay.
3) How do you recommend merchants engage with people who leave bad reviews on their merchant listings?
Engage, listen and resolve. Don’t be afraid to reach out to a disgruntled customer. Once you reach them, listen carefully to their concerns. If legitimate, work to resolve them and in the process turning an angry and frustrated customer into one who is enthusiastic about your company. While it is true that you cannot make everybody happy all the time, it is amazing how much anger can be turned away if you simply reach out.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.